Long Time, No See?

Long Time, No See? invites participants to set out to explore and reflect, in the spirit of adventure, to reveal other and emergent ways of existing in this world through poetic actions, walking, mobile technology and relationships that animate a sense of care.

Linda Carroli, Brisbane, Australia

As a participatory project, Long Time, No See? draws participants into an innovative arts based engagement with sustainability. Drawing on participatory practices and through the use of mobile devices, the project prompts participants through a process of thinking, mapping, talking and walking in their locality with a view to provoking grounded reflection about care and futuring. The intent is to map the intensities of shared values and commitment in a gradually expanding global network of affinity and momentum for change. This is set against and embedded into a web-based generative visualisation and sonification of massive datasets of demographic, geographic and environmental data.

The Long Time, No See? project presents and guides workshops engaging communities with a view to providing a platform for guided conversations exploring values and agency, also leaving a legacy of grassroots organising and facilitation that can extend far beyond the project. The objective is to build local collaborative resilience, capacity and governance. This engagement will happen in both workshop and DIY modes using freely available tools and resources. The growing global network is also supported through social media, such as a facebook group.

Practically the project utilises mobile GPS mapping derived from participants’ walking (and other movement) through their localities, combined with their ideas captured in geo-located texts, images and sound alongside related global environmental data. With custom cartographic tools and real time generative capability this raw data and local context will feed an online visualiation and sonification. Long Time No See? will take shape as a dynamic composite map of values and care encapsulating a collective commitment to futuring and change.